Pär Thörn-The red room(alphabetical) June 2nd
Weld presents Pär Thörn’s new book The Red Room (alphabetical) as recited simulantly, beginning to end, by a twenty piece choir.
What happens if you arrange every word in a traditional Swedish novel according to alphabetical order? Does the work become more logical? Is it dissolved? Or does it get an entirely new meaning?
Pär Thörn’s eighth book, The Red Room (alphabetical), hence takes issue with August Strindberg’s epic The Red Room. By thoroughly categorizing all words in Strindberg’s novel according to alphabetical and chronological order Pär Thörn raises the question of what a literary work really consists of. Chapter by chapter a powerful landscape of sounds and images appear in which the original story about Arvid Falk and his adventures in the art circuits of Stockholm is reduced to individual words and locutions that shine among the word blocks.
The Red Room (alphabetical) moves simultaneously between different types of readings such as the list, the database, concrete poetry, the remix, the attack, positivist literature analysis, the score and conceptual art.
Pär Thörn lives in Malmö and is active as a writer, conceptual artist and musician. He has published eight books ever since he made his debut in 2002 with Kändisar som jag har delat ut post till. Thörn presents readings and music as well as performances. The last few years he has performed about a hundred times in Sweden and abroad. He collaborates often with other artists, musicians and writers such as Leif Elggren, Jakob Riis (DK), Carl Lindh, Ida Börjel, Keith Rowe (UK), Charles Bernstein (USA) and Rasmus Graff (DK). At the moment he is working on a meta-poetical manuscript and plays live on radio with cassette players, finger cymbals and TV-sets. In 2005 he received the Åke Hodell stipend and in 2009 he was artist-in-residence in Copenhagen.